Sacrifice
by Atheniandream
Summary: Mike just didn't get it. / a Future Darvey Fic.


**Author's notes:** I don't get it. It think they've made tons of sloppy choices with these two characters and I'm getting fastly bored. I figure that Mike is most likely just as confused as the Darvey shippers. He's at least the last remaining character to see these two as they appear to be.

This is my appeal to the writers: _If you don't want Darvey, then for the love of god have these two move on with other people. Because it's just ridiculous now. It's starting to not make sense._

 _And to everyone who's waiting for a chapter from me,_

 _I'm trying my best, but not exactly getting a lot from the show. I'm trying to write realistic throughline and it's almost impossible. Bare with me ;-) Here's a little something._

* * *

 **Sacrifice**

Mike didn't get it.

It's the only thing that he'd managed to make out of this one beautiful day.

He just... _didn't get it_.

His eyes scanned the room for his other, now, married half. _The dutiful Maid of honor and best friend_.

From the moment he'd heard the seemingly joyous news come from her mouth, he had noticed Rachel swirl into a flurry, an excitable energy flowing out of her as she'd taken on the heady task with a truck full of gusto.

He'd picked her out of the crowd eventually, her cream and crimson tulip dress almost a brides gown in and of itself. He raised a numb hand letting the edge of the Champagne glass he was holding slide against his lips and watched, as his wife engaged with one of about a hundred of the Bride and Grooms guests.

Of those, he knew about _nine_.

She was braver than he when it came to socialising. He'd have had to have been paid to strike up the kind of conversations that came with a wedding.

He sighed, a frown bending into his face in a way that reminded him of his counterpart.

A counterpart that as of yet hadn't managed to make a second appearance. The first being the ceremony.

His eyes scanned the room again, before his attention was yet again waylaid. This time, by the star of the show.

He couldn't help but smile. His fondness for this woman among women had blossomed from the very moment she'd granted him an audience with fate, as it were. From that moment on she had been a fixed point in his ladder climb to the top, and a trusted aide ever since.

He watched her, a mass of auburn curls and caramel freckles that challenged her age and the sweeping fishtail of a number that wrapped delicately over one shoulder, inlaid with pearls and a corsage of sorts that sprayed from her collarbone and suggested at the low cut swoop at her back.

He was happy for her. _He was._ This had been a long time coming for a rare woman like her.

He had always wondered upon things. Upon the reasons for her being so single for so long.

It defied logic, that a woman who wanted all of those things, until now, hadn't have any of them.

 _Unless he was missing something…_

To his mind, there had only ever been one logical reasoning for why a woman like Donna Paulsen had been single all this time.

But yet, here she was, now, years on, finally with all of those things that he thought she had been putting on hold for another.

So it begged the question,

What had she _truly_ been waiting for?

"You're oddly quiet for a free bar."

The distinct sound of the older man's voice made him jump, the movement wobbling the last of his bubbles.

He straightened with a frown, glancing at the man next to him, a pose of his own as he sipped at what could only be eighteen year old scotch with an effortlessness that could turn you into a little wide eyed boy in a matter of moments.

"Where the hell have you been?" He found the words with gussy, eyeing his - until now - absent friend.

"Miss me?" He smirked cooly.

"It's been an hour and a half since we left the church, Harvey. Where did you get to?"

He watched Harvey's face level, his eyes flicking out into the heavy crowd before he dared to answer. "I had to leverage the end of that Weist & Freeman deal." He sighed.

"Still dipping in a toe and not the whole leg, huh?" Mike queried, inferring their gun-shy client merger.

"Yeah. I got them them to put their heads under the water." He remarked, a cruel smirk of confidence on his tanned face.

"Nice." Mike complimented, "I told Donna that you _didn't_ skip out after the ceremony to have a cry."

"Ha…." Harvey faked-laughed, giving Mike a good natured scowl before taking another sip of his seemingly double-poured drink.

Mike noticed the Groom then, his presence turning heads in a small group of people nearby.

"Do you know the guy?" Mike asked, inferring the mystery man that held the occasion.

"He owns an organic wholefoods chain." Harvey answered plainly.

"Really? How did you…?"

"Because...I met him. And Donna talks." Harvey shrugged. "Wait. Are you telling me that your wife is Maid of Honor and yet you haven't…talked to the guy?" He accused then, giving his younger counterpart a piteous stare.

"I've...spoken to him." Mike countered defensively. "He was…. _blah_."

"Blah?" Harvey repeated. "How very...insightful of you."

"He was just….non-descript. And his hair just kind of...stayed in its place the whole time. Like a Calvin Klein model."

"Are you telling me you have hair envy now?" Harvey mocked. "Not that I blame you…" He added with a smile.

Mike gave his friend a heavy look, and for once, not playing to his humourous defences. "I just...I don't get it."

"Get what, Mike?" Harvey asked, his tone sharpening in an instant.

He sighed, looking down at his drink for a moment. "I just thought….it was gonna be _you_." He said, quietly.

"What?"

He could hear his friend frowning through the word.

"I thought it was gonna be you and her up there."

"Mike…" He heard the other sudden change in the man's voice before he even dared to look. _Seriousness._ The joke was over.

 _Harvey Specter always had a limit when it came to the topic of Donna._

It just happened that tonight, Mike hadn't been leaning on a joke.

He turned to his friend, noticing the strange privacy around them. "Why isn't it you up there?" He asked him.

He watched as Harvey swallowed, looking out into the crowd for a moment, before turning back to reveal a slightly unsure expression.

"Because...it's better this way." He said, his face tighter somehow.

"I know that you think that, but...doesn't it hurt to see her with someone else?"

"Mike…" He half-pleaded, shaking his head. "I just want her to be happy."

"But not happy with you?" He questioned.

Any other day Harvey would have told him to drop it. To quit the line of questioning with some kind of push or jab or bark of some sort. Whether in words or actions. Something.

"Mike…" He started, straightening his shoulders as if to give himself a little extra armour. "Look...sometimes...you need to sacrifice your own happiness, for those that you love, if it means they'll be happy."

With that, and before he could object to Harvey's reasoning, the man was gone, disappearing behind a wash of faceless people milling about in front of him.

He blinked, twice, downing the contents of his flute-like glass and felt a sharp burn,

For more than just alcohol.

For the beginning of either a growing storm,

Or for a very different kind of tide.

That night he thought about the things he didn't have to sacrifice anymore.

* * *

As always,

Feed the Kitty.

A _


End file.
